“Dont give up. Obstacles can be overcome through strategy and learning.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“The intention behind the high difficulty of the games I direct is to evoke a feeling of joy and accomplishment in the player when they overcome these challenges.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“Dark Souls is in some ways an incomplete game, and I like to think that it has been completed by players, by their discoveries, as they moved along. I’d love to say that the nature of this incompleteness was completely deliberate, but it is both deliberate and by accident in different ways.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“I don’t claim to be a pro gamer in any shape or form.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“In order to produce the satisfaction of comprehension, there first needs to be the process of comprehension. Furthermore, the overarching idea at hand needs to be something that is actually comprehensible.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“I believe there are aspects of the narrative that become easier to understand by shifting the focus of the story to the characters. Illustrating growth and change in the protagonist becomes a simpler process, and these changes are, in fact, one of the themes of ‘Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice”s story.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“I personally want my games to be described as satisfying rather than difficult.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“’Gears Of War’ is one of my favourite games that I immersed myself in playing for long time, and Mr. Cliff Bleszinski is one of the greatest game creators that I respect.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“I, as a gamer, understand passion to discuss favourite games.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“When I was working on the first ‘Dark Souls’ – as far back as ‘Demon’s Souls,’ actually – I didn’t expect the player community to come up with speedrun contests or any of the strange new ways to play the games.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“The main concept of ‘Dark Souls III’ is the first flame and its successors; the world has been in this cycle of reigniting the flame since the first game, but now it seems to be disappearing, almost dying. We’re trying to draw out the aspects of this withering flame.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“To be honest, I’m really not interested on how I’m viewed as. The only thing I’m interested in is to keep creating something special. Whether that something is synonymous to me or not is really none of my concern.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“I’m not one to restrict the potential that ‘Dark Souls’ has by insisting that only I can work on the titles.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“Utilising wit in the thick of battle will be your key to victory.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“If you had a game that said, ‘Oops, you’re dead. Now switch off the game,’ it wouldn’t be very successful. So you do need to have something to teach and be there to learn from, and we feel that death in video games is a positive experience.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“Now I’m president. I get to meet a lot of other company presidents. They’re such weird people. I’m fascinated by them. I use some of them as enemy characters in our games.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“Ever since ‘Demon’s Souls,’ I’ve really been pursuing making games that give players a sense of accomplishment by overcoming tremendous odds.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“From the initial design stages of ‘Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice,’ we had the idea of the player being able to move dynamically through a detailed, multi-layered map. We found that a ‘shinobi’ type character was the key to achieving this in a way that was both realistic and cool.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“One of my favourite Japanese cartoons is ‘Yasuragi no Yakata,’ written by the famous Fujiko Fujio.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“Unlike most kids in Japan, I didn’t have a dream. I wasn’t ambitious.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“Perhaps the tranquillity of ‘Deracine’ heightens the violence in ‘Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice,’ while the intensity of ‘Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice’ makes ‘Deracine’ all the more serene.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“I think one of the studio’s characteristics is to embrace wholeheartedly what we feel is interesting; what we perceive to be worthwhile, cool, or beautiful; and to place these ideals at the foundation of the games we make.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“The more time I spend working on ‘Sekiro,’ the deeper I sink into this zone of blood and gore and conflict. But if I want to get out of it, I can walk over to the other side of the studio and ease myself into a completely different feeling when I work on ‘Deracine.’”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“I’ve observed some surprise in the reactions so far from people who were not aware that FromSoftware does other things besides ‘Souls.’ This serves as a reminder to me that we have an established reputation – and that we should work on different games so we can be more flexible and build a broader profile.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“I believe it’s important for us to have a diverse and free approach to making games in the way that we like.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“It’s true that there was a lot of influence from ‘Tenchu.’ We even pondered making ‘Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice’ a part of the ‘Tenchu’ series at first.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“I’m not very good at action games in general and find most action games to be hard.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“A shinobi embodies an archetype that is able to use everything at their disposal. They don’t pick a fighting style; they use every means and everything they can get their hands on. They exploit every weakness.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“First of all, I don’t dislike direct storytelling – people seem to think that about my games! Actually, the truth is, I’m just not good at implementing direct narrative in my games.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“I’ve been familiar with western fantasy novels since I was a boy.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“Overcoming challenges by learning something in a game is a very rewarding feeling, and that’s what I wanted to prioritise in ‘Dark Souls’ and ‘Demon’s Souls.’”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“Demons, chaos, dragons – all of them are different incarnations and representations of our idea of death in ‘Dark Souls.’”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“In ‘Demon’s Souls,’ we tried to implement some features in a kind of experimental way, not being sure whether or not it would be popular, but we did it anyway so that we could see how people reacted.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“The construction of ‘Sekiro”s world is based on that of traditional Sengoku, or medieval Japan. To that end, we made sure to reference a lot of written materials on that period as well as actually visit several locations.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“’Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice”s story is one of fate and growth.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“The grappling hook allows for versatile and dynamic movement through the map, while a variety of shinobi-esque tools allow for all sorts of tricks and finesse. These are very important elements of ‘Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice”s gameplay and the protagonist’s nature.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“Being a director, I’ve had the privilege of heading a PS3 launch title. Looking back, I think the PS4 has made the development cycle much easier.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“Personality-wise, I like to avoid putting my pride on parade.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“Growing up, as a kid, I loved to read. I liked to read books that were above my range. I always tried to aim higher and read difficult books.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“Growing up, I was restricted at home from playing video games until I reached university.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“There was a board game called ‘Sorcery,’ which is one of my favorites, and I would often revisit the game. It’s not a video game, but it definitely stands out in my mind as a game that impacted me.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“I’m not necessarily a fan of horror genre of movies or books.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“We do need this diversity in the industry. Regardless of what From Software is doing, we need people making battle royale games and live services, and we need people making single-player focused experiences. We feel that this diversity is what will keep everyone going.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“I really like ‘Metal Wolf Chaos,’ but it’s not my title.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“We always look back at our back catalogue for inspiration for new titles, but when it comes to very old things like the ‘King’s Field’ series, I’m concerned about just mimicking the style of what Naotoshi Zin, the founder of FromSoftware, created for the PlayStation original. I would rather not go back to it simply out of respect.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“It’s quite obvious that the ‘Dark Souls’ franchise is reaching a turning point, and I’m happy that I have a greater budget for the third game, as well as the creative freedom to make my own decisions. But if there were some restrictions about what I was creating, I definitely wouldn’t want to work on it.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“From Software believes all the things we have learned in the past titles can be best reflected in the future only by starting work on a new franchise or series. That’s the philosophy behind us trying to make a decision about leaving the ‘Dark Souls’ franchise.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“I would like ‘Dark Souls’ to be a broad exploration game filled with so many veiled things and details.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“I enjoy the process of adding elaboration into games and like to communicate with users through the details I create.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“’Deracine’ is French for uprooting, or someone who’s been displaced from their natural environment.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“Our strengths or maybe our characteristic as a developer firm software used to maybe be known as a studio that put out unexpected, almost, like, quirky, very unique titles. Not that we’ve lost that charm in recent years, but that’s something that I really, really liked about our studio.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“I think death is a crucial element when designing games around the theme of the satisfaction of overcoming overwhelming odds.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“If the number of easy games is increasing nowadays, I guess it is because difficulty is not related to interesting and worthwhile game elements in many games among players.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“’Dark Souls’ is my life’s work; everything I came up with for ‘Dark Souls III’ is based on my personal preferences.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“To feel fulfilled, you must first have a goal that needs fulfilling. At the same time, it must actually be possible to fulfill said goal.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“Often, I hear my ideas are more incomprehensible than not.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“I am conscious of that when I make these games: I try to make a game that has beautiful open spaces, gaps, room for players to enjoy it in ways that were not authored. I never want it to be where you have to follow the rules completely, where you have to do things exactly as the designers intended.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“We personally don’t try to follow industry trends or themes. We just try and make something that we think would be cool and we want to make.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“Games are a media that relies on technology to be innovative and forward thinking and interesting. Personally, I love being at that forefront when something new comes out.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“I love throwing down the gauntlet and trying our hand at that new tech.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“It’s true that I’m sad about not being involved in the development of ‘Dark Souls II,’ because I’ve worked on ‘Demon’s Souls’ and ‘Dark Souls” development for the past five years.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“Everybody knows what the core of ‘Dark Souls’ is – the dev team does, the fans do, the media does – and that will never change.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“I don’t think it’d be the right choice to continue indefinitely creating ‘Souls’ and ‘Bloodborne’ games.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“I’m considering ‘Dark Souls 3’ to be the big closure on the series. That’s not just limited to me, but From Software and myself together want to aggressively make new things in the future.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“I believe that From Software has to create new things. There will be new types of games coming from us, and ‘Dark Souls 3’ is an important marker in the evolution of From Software.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“I believe I can do both the ‘Bloodborne DLC’ and ‘Dark Souls 3.’ This isn’t the first time I’ve had to work on two projects at the same time.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“For me, ‘Dark Souls III’ is the end, but that doesn’t mean the end for ‘Dark Souls.’ If someone other than myself, like another staff member, wants to make a ‘Dark Souls,’ then I don’t want to deny others from making future installments.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“I believe that ‘Dark Souls III’ must be developed as its own individual series.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“I am very happy if those who played ‘Bloodborne’ are interested in ‘Dark Souls III’ too.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
“Development of ‘Bloodborne’ and sinking into the battle of the hunter and the unique horror world was not only an exciting experience but it also allowed me to re-acknowledge the charm of a fantasy world and the intrigue of ‘Dark Souls’ for me.”
― Hidetaka Miyazaki
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